Are you ready for President Scarborough?

posted at 7:21 pm on September 11, 2012 by Allahpundit

Oh, come on. The conservative base would never allow the GOP to nominate someone so famously moderate. Except this year, I mean. And in 2008. And 1996, 1992, 1988. And come to think of it, Dubya wasn’t exactly a tea partier either.

Three words, my friends: Scarborough/Huntsman 2016?

First, Joe flirted with the idea of running against Barack Obama. An ex–Florida congressman and a moderate Republican, he conferred with fellow centrists just before the primaries, occasionally shuttling around with his friend Mike Bloomberg…

And just to raise the temperature a tad? After the presidential inauguration in January, Joe (no fan of Mitt Romney’s—”I’ve been very critical”) plans on publishing a memoir that will serve—no joke—as a vehicle to test the waters for a presidential run in 2016. Take that, Mr. Romney.

All a big misunderstanding, said Scarborough to Politico. The interview for this Vanity Fair piece was, allegedly, conducted in 2010(!); the “testing the waters” stuff was a reference to 2012, and he ultimately decided against testing them. I kind of believe him too, just because the field of candidates this year was so thin and the potential field in 2016 or 2020 so strong that it’d be crazy to have passed on a run now in hopes of trying later. Against Romney, Gingrich, and Santorum, Scarborough could have tried to fill the Huntsman role of “more moderate than Mitt” with some Contract With America cred and media savvy. He wouldn’t have won (unless Mike Bloomberg gave his Super PAC a few hundred million dollars), but he would have raised his profile and the profile of the No Labels crowd a bunch. Against Rubio, Ryan, Christie, Jindal, and maybe Jeb Bush, he’d just be the guy from MSNBC who used to be a congressman or something. No chance of it happening. Or is there?

Still, while Scarborough said he had no plans to run for president at the moment, he did not rule out the possibility that he might change his mind before 2016.

“I’ve got no plans to run in 2016, or in 2020. But you never know what’s going to happen,” he said. “Every two years, there’s someone suggesting that I run for Senate. Every two years, the national party comes to me. I’ve always been really flattered. But I look around, and I have the best job in the world. I have no desire to leave.”

The conventional wisdom is that if Romney loses, the base will demand a truly conservative nominee next time after riding two squishes to bitter defeats against O. The thing is, as noted up top, the base typically doesn’t decide who wins. If there’s a fight on the right among Rubio et al. to be the “conservative choice” next time, does that leave a huge space on the center-right for Jeb Bush or some other Scarborough-esque moderate to clean up? Chris Matthews is kidding himself if he thinks losing to O will destroy the right, but I do think you’ll see some strategic concessions in the next cycle depending upon what happens this fall. The GOP won’t back away from fiscal conservatism — budgetary math simply won’t allow it — but if O wins narrowly on the strength of Latino voters, some form of amnesty will get a fresh look. (And don’t think Jeb, in particular, doesn’t know it.) The alternative is that no serious moderates run next time and the GOP does at last get a solidly conservative nominee, but in that case we’ll have to endure endless agonizing months of media hyperventilation over a third-party run by Bloomberg himself or some other well-known moderate (Huntsman?) backed by major Super PAC money. Not sure if there are enough No Labels billionaires out there to keep things competitive when rich Republicans and Democrats will be pouring money into their sides’ respective Super PACs, but if you want a thumbnail sketch of Election 2016 or 2020, there you go. Just imagine the debates: Hillary for the Democrats, Rubio for the GOP, and a guy whose signature issue is banning Big Gulps for No Labels. *Sad trombone*

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Who’s his running mate going to be? You mentioned Huntsman? He is now with Brookings (liberal think tank) as a distinguished fellow.
Joe is so far left he can’t go any further.
Was this posted to make us feel better about the polls?

Does anyone know why R & R didn’t put up any protest before going into the Lion’s Den with all liberal moderators for the debates? Set up to fail, don’t you think? Will Candy Crowley be talking with O & going over the questions? I don’t think I can watch them.

Please. Just to put an exclamation point on the absurdity of Joe running, for anything, much less the presidency…a little reminder of why/how he left politics in the first place.

Despite Joe’s laughable claim to have left politics because he wanted to..Spend More Time With His Family(TM), Joe left because of scandal. A really really ugly scandal. Joe was rumored to be having an affair with a young woman who worked for him. A young woman later found dead. IN JOE’S OFFICE. Nope, not making this up. What’s that they say about a live boy a dead girl?

Having a low opinion of Mitt is one thing, AP. You’ve been riding his a$$ since the primaries began last year. But this is a bridge to far. I truly think that you it’s time for you to go sign up with Charles Johnson. He had a mid-life change as well and the 2 of you would make perfect butt buddies. Call your new venture Little Green Snotballs.

Joe Scarborough was my representative in Florida’s First District. He was a crappy rep then, he’s a crappy anchor and a worse political analyst now. There is NO FREAKING WAY he’ll ever make it past a primary. I’m sick of these “no labels” a-holes; they are Democrats in disguise. And, Bloomberg? God Almighty, he’s a DISASTER.

I can remember watching ’60 Minutes’ after a superbowl game. 60 Minutes got a late start as the game ran into the program’s time. “The Young Governor From Arkansas Who Wants To Be President” and his lovely wife were given the remainder of the show. Those watching got to see Mr. Clinton deny the Gennifer Flowers thing and Hillary ‘Stand By Her Man.’

I remember thinking that nobody in his right mind could vote for this bozo for the Presidency.